Persuasion

The BYAF compliance method

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“Can I move? I’m better when I move.”

There’s a sexy scene in the 1969 classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:

Butch and Sundance are American outlaws who have run away to Bolivia. They’re trying to get work at a Bolivian silver mine.

The boss at the mine wants to see if either Butch or Sundance can shoot a gun. What a joke. Sundance is the fastest and deadliest gun in the West.

So the boss throws a rock 30 feet away. “Hit that,” he says.

Sundance straightens his arm… takes aim… fires and misses.
​
The boss spits on the ground. He turns around and starts to walk away.

“Can I move?” Sundance asks.

“Move?” the boss says. “What the hell you mean move?”

In a split second, Sundance squats down, pulls out his gun, shoots the rock and then shoots it again while it’s midair, splitting it in two.

In other words:​​

It’s not common sense… but sometimes you get better results if you give people some space to move.

A while back, I read an academic paper about something called the BYAF compliance method.

​​BYAF = but you are free.

​​You make a request, and you tell people they are free to say no. It’s supposed to double the number of yeses you get.

It also goes against all copywriting dogma.

​​Copywriters will tell you that you should close off all doors… conclusively answer all objections… and PUSH PUSH PUSH for the sale.

So who’s right?

The BYAF crowd has 42 scientific studies on its side.

​​The “slam all the doors shut” copywriters have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of sales behind them.

You might think the conclusion is clear. But I think it really depends on who you’re dealing with.

For example, Jim Camp was a negotiation expert who worked with Fortune 500 execs while they negotiated multi-billion-dollar deals.

One of the big tenets of his negotiation system was allowing people to say no.

​​It didn’t mean ending the negotiation… in fact, no was just the beginning.

Because Camp said that in the kinds of negotiations he was involved in, “slamming all the doors shut” so your prospect feels caged in and only has the option you want him to take… well, that was a recipe for an abrupt end to the negotiation, without ever being welcome back for round two.

Does this apply in copywriting?

I definitely think so.

Sure, there are markets where people need you to be a German Shepherd, barking at them so they make their way into the fold in an orderly fashion.

​​But there are other markets, equally as profitable or more so, where it’s better to allow people to move before you ask them to shoot.

And now, if you’d like to sign up for my newsletter:

Click here and fill out the form that appears. But of course, you’re are free to do whatever you choose.

Super Bowl 2022 wager update

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I was finishing up my workday today when an email landed in my inbox and made my heart freeze. The subject line read:

“The Best, Funniest, and Cringiest Crypto Ads from the Super Bowl”

“Oh God,” I gasped, “the Super Bowl… I completely forgot!”

Super Bowl 2022 is kind of a big deal in my life. Because last week, I made a wager in this very newsletter.

The bet was for readers to write in and pick this year’s Super Bowl winner.

The prize was a 50% discount on my upcoming Copy Zone offer.

The outcome was being proven wrong twice:

1. Having a stake on the outcome of the game didn’t make me watch the Super Bowl (or even remember that it’s on)

2. People on my list, and therefore me as well, overwhelmingly expected the Bengals to win

It turns out the Rams won, though it was close and tense until the end. (I watched the highlights just now.)

Anyways, if you bet on the Rams, I will send you a separate email with a 50% discount code. You can use this code, if you want to, during the Copy Zone launch later this month.

If you didn’t bet on the Rams, I would like to send you home with a consolation prize. Something in the form of a direct response idea you can profit from.

But unfortunately, since I’m writing this email late in the day… much later than I normally do… I don’t have my usual direct response idea primped and ready.

Fortunately, “the best crypto ad” from this Super Bowl, at least according to that email I got, is actually a direct response ad.

Shocking, right?

Apparently, the response to this ad was so high that the website hosting the landing page crashed.

Even so, according to some back of the envelope math, it’s unlikely the ad recouped the $13M cost of the 1-minute Super Bowl slot.

So can you learn anything from this ad? Perhaps how not to do DR advertising. In case you’re curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zLsUhOCqyU

My guilty-pleasure morning ritual gets an ugly update

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I sat down a few moments ago for my guilty-pleasure morning ritual. The coffee was ready, I flipped open my laptop and—

“Oh what the hell is this,” I said out loud.

The game was still the same. But the background of the site had changed from dark gray to white.

I checked the URL. It was no longer some weird .co.uk domain. It was now nytimes.com.

Perhaps you’ve seen the same.

After all, millions of people around the world have all been playing this game each day, and millions more have been joining them week by week.

The game is a word-guessing game, called Wordle, created by a guy named Josh Wardle.

Wardle created Wordle some time ago as a game that just he and his girlfriend could play together. His friends and family got in on it too. Then Wardle released Wordle publicly on his website last October.

That first month, a total of 90 people played it.

Two months later, in December, the number of people playing Wordle each day had grown to 300,000.

By January, it was millions each day.

On February 1st, the New York Times bought Wordle from Wardle, for a “low 7 figures” sum. And today, here we are, with the stupid, white, failing NYT background.

Oh well. In the end, the corporations absorb everything. But let’s talk influence:

I can see many things that went into making Wordle a success. I want to point out just one. It might be relevant to you if you are interested in the creative or marketing side of reality.

Like, I said, Wordle is my guilty-pleasure morning ritual.

That’s because there’s only one Wordle puzzle each day.

Once you play — whether you win or lose — that’s it. You gotta wait until tomorrow, when the next one comes out.

This has a few key consequences:

One of course is scarcity. It makes each Wordle puzzle feel more valuable and interesting. It keeps you coming back day after day.

Two is that you can’t glut yourself.

With most games – and with things other than games too — I often keep playing to the point where I start to feel disgusted.

But there’s no risk of that with Wordle. It’s like a Spartan marriage. The two sides meet only rarely, and are full of desire for each other.

But maybe the most important thing is that each Wordle puzzle feels unique and real.

Wordle grew so quickly because players shared their results on Twitter. (Through a clever design, Wardle allowed people to share their results without giving away the puzzle.)

That worked because there is only one puzzle a day. Everybody in the world who played Wordle on a given day had that same puzzle.

In other words, it made sense to brag about your results, because other Wordle players actually shared your experience. It even created a sense of connection to other people playing Wordle.

But maybe you haven’t played Wordle yet, and you’re getting lost in what I’m talking about. Or maybe you’re wondering what this might mean for you, or how can you use this.

I’ll give you just one idea bouncing around in my head:

For a long time, I’ve been writing these daily emails, and then posting them to my website as an archive. This has helped me in the past because these blog archives were the main way people found me and my newsletter.

But that’s slowly changing. And so today I remembered an idea I had a while ago:

To scrap the archive, and simply post the latest daily email on my site. Each day, the email on the front page would be updated, and the previous email would disappear. Plus there would be a newsletter optin form for people who don’t want to miss out.

I’m not sure if this is smart. I’m not sure whether I will do it. But maybe.

Because Wardle’s Wordle success shows that in a world where everybody’s working hard to get you as addicted and engaged as possible… less can be more.

Anyways, if you have any advice for me on the technical side of how I could easily implement my latest-email-front-page idea on my WordPress site, please write in and let me know.

And if you haven’t played Wordle yet, you can find it on the white-background page at the link below. (I got today’s puzzle in two tries only — my best score yet.)

https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

Better the devil they don’t know

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Bzzzzzzz bzzzzzz bzzzzzzzz – the front door buzzer kept ringing aggressively.

Pavel, barefoot and still in his underwear, patted over to check the security camera feed.

Six large men were standing outside his door.

“They had guns and they looked very serious,” Pavel said later. “They seemed to want to break the door.”

Pavel looked despairingly at his phone. If only he could call his brother and share just a few critical instructions.

But what could he say?

What kind of message could he send?

After all, the guys outside the door were from the secret service. And the secret service could read and hear anything.

“I realized I don’t have a safe means of communication with him,” Pavel said in an interview with the New York Times. “That’s how Telegram started.”

I just read a new Wired article about Pavel Durov.

In 2006, Durov founded VKontakte, a Russian Facebook clone.

VK eventually became a multi-billion-dollar company. Durov got rich.

Then in 2011, Durov drew the worst kind of heat upon himself.

He refused to cave to the Kremlin’s request to block opposition groups on VK. And he tweeted his “official” response to the government – a photo of a dog with its tongue hanging out.

That led to the visit at his home.

Durov survived that encounter. And he wasn’t cowed.

A short while later, he launched Telegram, the messaging app.

He positioned Telegram as a secure, decentralized, no-censorship alternative to corporate offers like WhatsApp.

That positioning went back to the origin story from 2011, with secret services thugs beating on Durov’s door.

The positioning has been reinforced by Durov’s actions since. As things got hotter for him in Russia, he picked up his small team and started moving around the world.

“I’m out of Russia and have no plans to go back,” he told TechCrunch in 2014. “Unfortunately, the country is incompatible with Internet business at the moment.”

Well, if you believe the Wired article, all that’s PR and marketing hype.

According to Wired, Durov wouldn’t be the CEO of Telegram today without powerful Kremlin connections yesterday.

And even after he supposedly left Russia with no plans to go back… he still kept his posh offices in St. Petersburg. He continued to visit there, and regularly spent entire days working in the office.

So what’s the truth?

I personally don’t care about Telegram or about Pavel Durov. But I do care about persuasion and influence.

And so the only truth I want to share with you is the following idea from the book True Believer:

“The ideal devil is a foreigner.”

Durov knew this instinctively. As one of his former business associate said,

“Pavel is a king of PR and marketing. Probably one of the best people in the world. I think he wanted to play the good guy with the West.”

It definitely worked.

Telegram grew steadily, and it became the world’s most downloaded app in 2021. It’s phenomenally popular in Asia, Latin America, and increasingly in Europe. To date, it’s been downloaded over 1 billion times.

In large part, that’s because Telegram is seen just as Durov wants it to be seen. As a decentralized, anti-establishment, freedom-fighters app.

How else could it be? The founder himself had to run away from the secret service of that foreign devil Putin… and the repressive state Putin represents.

So there you go:

If you want strong positioning for your product, create a good-vs-evil struggle between you and Vladimir Putin. Or at least some other foreign devil, relative to your target audience.

But what if you can’t get a good foreign devil?

In that case, keep an eye on Pavel Durov and the future of Telegram. Because as the Wired article says:

“As Durov’s run-ins with the Kremlin recede into the past, authoritarian surveillance has, in some ways, ceased to be the symbolic foil that it once was for Telegram. Instead, Durov has increasingly cast his platform in heroic opposition to Facebook, Apple, and Google.”

Will Apple and Google serve as well as Putin did?

Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. Or maybe Durov has also read True Believer. And so maybe he’ll get some use from the full quote above:

“The ideal devil is a foreigner. To quality as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry.”

But maybe you’re wondering why I don’t take my own advice and talk about some foreign or domestic devils.

Don’t worry. I will. I just don’t want to draw attention to it by doing it today. If you’d like to keep an eye on me as I create some foreign devils, sign up for my email newsletter here.

A reader tries to disturb me but ends up turning me on

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Last night, in response to my “Don’t vote for just some guy” email, a reader wrote in:

Hi John! 🙂
What is your sexual preference? Gay or straight?
Sorry if this question disturbs you!

I don’t know if I would call it a sexual preference, but I will tell you what really turns me on:

It’s when Internet strangers take the time to write and try to get a rise out of me. Because it means I’m doing something right.

The way I look at it is:

Your online persona is like a sales bullet.

You have to reveal enough to get people involved, like the guy above. But you have to withhold enough to keep people wanting more.

Now if you’ve been reading my emails for a short while, you might say I rarely share anything about my life, and so I fail hard on the first part of this equation.

The fact is, I’ve been writing these emails, every day, for over three years.

​​During that time, I’ve shared a lot of personal stories, including some about my colorful-if-patchy dating, sex, and relationship history.

And I guess that’s really the point raised by the come-hither question above. The point being:

If you want people to know anything about you online, you have to repeat yourself to no end.

New people join your list. Then they skip some of your emails. Or they don’t skip, but they don’t listen. Or, in the words of Fast Eddie Felson, they listen, but they don’t hear.

So if there is anything you want to make sure people online know about you… you have to say it often, and then repeat it, even when it starts to get nauseating for you personally.

Fortunately, I don’t rely on my email newsletter as my only or really my primary source of income (you can sign up for the newsletter here if you like).

That’s why I don’t have to keep repeating my stories, or reveal personal stuff, past the point where I myself find it amusing. (Maybe there’s a lesson in there too.)

But there are a few things I want to make sure you know about me.

Such as, for example, the rare and choice items I have for sale.

Like my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters book. No, it doesn’t have anything about my sexual past… but it does have a few personal stories to help illustrate the valuable lessons I learned from some of the world’s best copywriters.

This book is cheap, especially considering the value that’s inside.

It’s available on Amazon.

It’s called the 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Did I mention it’s available on Amazon and that it’s cheap and yet valuable? The link to it is here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Don’t listen to me, I’m just some guy

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A lot of people dismiss my email newsletter because I’m just some guy. After all…

1. I don’t call myself a copywriting expert…

2. I don’t frame and hang up endorsements I’ve gotten from gurus in the field…

3. I don’t talk about how much money I make, or brag about my house, or car, or stable of racing mules…

4. I rarely talk about what sales results I’ve gotten…

5. I have no pictures of me on stage, with a roomful of people, facing towards me, pens and notebooks in hand…

6. I don’t work to position myself as “The World’s Greatest” anything…

7. I don’t have a string of control packages to trot out, or a bunch of marquee clients to keep referring to…

8. I don’t keep repeating that I care for you, and that I will take care of you, and that things will be okay, if you only do what I say and buy what I put on sale…

9. As far as I know, but my memory is dodgy, I’ve never put the adjectives best, uniquest, hardest working, most effective, or most interesting anywhere near my name.

And now, if you can, try to relax.

Because I’m not lashing out — or at least I don’t think so — against people who are more successful than I am.

I’m also not trying to signal my higher virtue or position myself as an outsider.

I’m not even trying to warn you about the evil gurus and their evil tactics.

And I’m definitely not promising that I won’t do any of the things on the list above, or that I’ve never done them before. Because I have, and I will.

So what’s up?

All I’m really doing today is what I what I like to do best in these emails. And that’s to find an interesting persuasion or influence idea… and then put it into practice.

Maybe you’d like to know what today’s idea is.

Well, here’s another self-defeating thing I sometimes do in these emails. I sometimes end my emails without leaving you with a clear soundbite to remember. But don’t worry.

I won’t leave you hanging completely.

You can find out more about today’s idea in the short post at the link below.

The post talks about one of the most influential and effective (and, I might add, best, uniquest, and hardest working) political ads of all time. In case you are interested:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-vote-negro-steve-silver

Oh, and if you want to join my email newsletter — but remember, I’m just some guy — you can do that here.

Let’s see if I can make you watch the SuperBowl

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A few days ago, I was listening to an old episode of the James Altucher podcast, and I learned this curious fact:

A person who bets any amount of money on a game is 11x more likely to watch the game.

I’m not sure if this means that you can get people to watch a game, just by getting them to bet. But I’m willing to find out.

Because there’s an old marketing idea that I’ve long thought is super clever.

As far as I know, nobody today in the DM world is using it, at least not online. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you can correct me.

Here’s the idea. It comes from direct marketing legend Joe Sugarman, the guy who made BluBlocker sunglasses into a $300M brand.

Joe once wrote an ad promoting a computer. He ran it around the time of the SuperBowl.

The ad basically said, if the Bears win the SuperBowl, you get this computer at 50% off. If they lose, the price stays as it is. And here’s the outcome, in Joe’s own words:

“There was a lineup of people — we had a retail store — there was a literally a lineup of people all the way around the block waiting to pick up their computer that they were getting for 50% off. The funny part about it was that we were making a nice profit on that as well.”

Like I said, I’m willing to test this idea out.

So I just checked. The Superbowl is in 8 days.

And I happen to be working on a new offer. It’s called Copy Zone. It’s about succeeding in the business part of copywriting — getting started, finding clients, managing clients, performance deals, upleveling.

I am planning to get Copy Zone out by the end of this month. And I’m planning to sell it for $150 to start. But I’ll make you a wager:

If you pick the winner of this Superbowl right — Bengals or Rams — you get my Copy Zone offer for 50% off, or for $75, during the launch window.

Of course, you gotta buy a ticket if you want a piece of this action.

Fortunately, the ticket to play this game is free. But it is time-limited.

So if you want to play this game of chance, you’ll need to get on my email list first. Then just hit reply to my welcome email and pick this year’s SuperBowl Winner.

Bengals. Or Rams.

You have time to enter until I send out my email tomorrow, Monday, Feb 7 2022, at 8:24 CET.

​​Call — or rather, email — now. Our bookies are standing by.

The man who kept falling out of bed

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In the middle of the night, a man in a hospital bed kept falling out of bed.

Each time, the orderlies came and picked him up off the floor. They helped him get back into bed.

And then, a short while later — THUD. The man fell out again. The reason why is pretty incredible.

Today is the last day of my denial mini-series.

Over the past five days, I’ve showed you different ways that people deny unpleasant things in their lives.

I’ve been doing this A) because this denial stuff is fascinating… and B) because it’s something we all do all the time.

So my claim is that if you know how denial shows up in life, it can help you understand yourself better. And it can help you understand other people too, including the ones you want to get something from.

And now we’ve come full circle.

Because today’s final denial mechanism is projection.

I wrote about that recently. An Internet stranger sent me an email to accuse me of name-dropping in this newsletter… and in that same email, he rattled off the names of a bunch of copywriting gurus.

But that’s kind of fluffy, isn’t it?

There’s no way to prove that it’s really denial-by-projection that’s going on in such a person’s brain.

That’s why I’m telling you the story off the man who kept falling out of bed.

This story was reported in the book Phantoms in the Brain by Vilaynur Ramachandran. He’s the neuroscientist who studied people with paralyzed limbs.

Ramachandran found these paralyzed-limb patients sometimes engaged in ridiculous, obvious, impossible denials… in spite of otherwise being perfectly sane and rational people.

Like the guy who kept falling out of bed.

The doctor on the hospital ward asked him why he kept falling out of bed.

The falling man looked frightened. “Doctor,” he said, “these medical students have been putting a cadaver’s arm in my bed. I’ve been trying to get rid of it all night!”

In other words, this guy couldn’t admit the paralyzed arm belonged to him. So he assigned it to a cadaver.

And he kept pushing it away (rightly so, who wants to sleep next to a cadaver’s arm). But each time he finally got the arm out of the bed, he found himself pulled after it down to the floor.

You might say this denial borders between rationalization (my email yesterday) and projection (my email today).

Fine. Ramachandran has more straightforward projection stories.

Like the woman who claimed the paralyzed arm next to her was too big and hairy to be her own.

“Whose arm is it?” Ramachandran asked her.

The woman thought for a second. “It must be my brother’s,” she said.

So that’s all I got for you for denial and projection. Except one more quick story.

It’s by James Altucher, about an encounter he had with one of the most infamous people of this century.

James’s story features projection by that infamous person. ​And it might save you from making a huge mistake at some point in your life.

​​So if you’re curious to read the story, you can find it below.

But before you go, you look like the kind of person who wants to get more email subscribers. Am I right? Maybe I’m just projecting. Sign up for my newsletter in any case. And then here’s James’s article:

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/im-the-worst-judge-of-character/

Flat-Earther accidentally proves deep truth about Reddit users

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Over the past 24 hours, one of the top five post on Reddit has been:

“Flat-Earther accidentally proves the earth is round in his own experiment”

It’s a video of a guy, doing an experiment in his back yard, at night, with a lamp and a couple of styrofoam boards.

You don’t need to follow the precise thinking of this modern Galileo. The gist is this:

If the earth is flat, as the guy believes, then the lamp will be visible in one setup with the styrofoam boards.

But if the earth is curved, as the Illuminati want you to believe, then the lamp will be visible in a second, different setup.

Result:

The guy does the experiment with the desired, flat-Earth setup.

Nothing. The lamp is invisible.

The guy moves the lamp, to the control, Illuminati setup.

Suddenly, the bitch lamp becomes visible.

“Interesting,” the flat-earther says. “… interesting…”

Over the past four days, I’ve been talking about denial, and the ways we all do it all the time.

Today I got one more denial strategy for you. It’s the most useful one for marketers. It’s called rationalization.

That’s when we are faced with a fact we cannot or will not stomach, and so we explain it away.

Apparently, the flat earther in the Reddit video explained away his experiment results. Uneven terrain… twigs… branches… possibly a tear in the fabric of time and space.

Rationalizations like this are not particularly interesting. But like I said, they are most useful for marketing.

In fact, there’s a whole powerful school of marketing called reason why. It’s all about rationalization.

But this email is not about reason why marketing or making people believe what they already “know.”

Instead, I just want to point out that, when people fervently explain something away… they are probably denying a deep, uncomfortable truth.

Such as the millions of people on Reddit, upvoting that flat-earther post.

Some of those Reddit users are cackling (see my email yesterday about humor as a denial tactic).

​​But many are rationalizing. Like Reddit user ringhillsta, who wrote:

“The fact that there are people out there who actually still belives that the Earth is flat is scary and funny at the same time and i feel a bit sorry for them. Must be hard being that dumb lol.”

So what could be the deep and uncomfortable truth that ringhillsta is trying to deny?

Who knows.

Perhaps it’s that we’ve moved into an era where we have almost no direct experience with the “truths” in our lives.

Instead, we get them all second- and third-hand, through college textbooks… Neil deGrasse Tyson… and various mainstream subreddits.

And if anybody ever stands up to question that, there’s a ready-made rationalization to sweep away that person. “Dude what are you some flat earther? I feel sorry for you. Must be hard being that dumb lol.”

Anyways, this denial mini-series has been going on for borderline too long.

So I promise to wrap it up tomorrow, and bring it full circle to where we started from.

​​Or is that impossible? Maybe it’s all just a straight line… and we will fall off at the end.

Only one way to find out — read my email tomorrow. You can sign up here to get it.

I’ve thought this email over a lot, I wanted to get it just right

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Picture the scene:

A man, wearing a pastel flower-print shirt and unmatching shorts, runs down the street after a stylishly dressed woman.

HIM: Um, look.

She turns around.

HIM: Sorry. I just… um, well this is a really stupid question, particularly in view of our recent shopping excursion [they had just been shopping together for the woman’s wedding gown]… but ah… I just wondered… if by any chance, um… ah… well obviously not, because I’m just some git who’s only slept with nine people… but I just wondered… I really feel… um… in short, to recap in a slightly clearer version… in the words of David Cassidy, in fact, while he was still with The Partridge Family… I THINK I LOVE YOU. And I just wondered if by any chance you wouldn’t like to… um… ah… um… no… no… no, of course, not. I’m an idiot. He’s not. Excellent, excellent. Fantastic. Lovely to see you. Sorry to disturb. Better get on.

The man turns to leave.

HER: That was very romantic.

The man turns to face her again and winces.

HIM: Well, I thought it over a lot. I wanted to get it just right.

That’s a scene from the 1994 movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. The man in the scene is played by Hugh Grant, in his typical 90s role as a boyishly charming uber-Englishman.

I bring this scene up because over the last few days, I’ve been talking about denial. When people are faced with a situation… or realization… or personal characteristic that they find unacceptable… and so they take various evasive maneuvers.

Such as for example, making a joke out of it.

That’s what’s happening in the last line of that scene above. Hugh has just put his heart on the line, he’s been tacitly rejected, and he’s made a donkey out of himself.

​​What better way to put it all behind than with a bit of irony?

Vilaynur Ramachandran, the neuroscientist whose book got me thinking about denial in the first place, says that denial explains why so much of humor deals with sensitive topics like sex and death.

​​And I guess it explains 90% of the life work of Woody Allen.

So the conclusion is, when you hear people making a joke out of something… well, um… ah… to put it more concretely, in the words of Eric Idle in fact, while he was still with Monty Python… WHEN YOU PURSE YOUR LIPS AND WHISTLE, IT MEANS YOU’RE CHEWING ON — but of course. How silly of me. Sorry, terrible. You must already know what I’m getting at. And you wouldn’t perhaps want to… but of course not. No. Excellent. Excellent. Lovely to see you. Better get on.